In memoriam

Sunday last was an unusual day, and it's taken me this long to get my head around it.

My mother, a sweet if indelibly broken individual, has long collected other broken people around her. She's a caring heart, and a bit of a soft touch, so her menagerie of unusual human beings is always a bit of a circus. One of the fixtures in her life for the past twenty years has been a woman names Erica Brown. That's her real name, dear readers, not some sort of code-- and the tale unfolding is no unkind fiction. That's the hardest part for me to comprehend.

Erica was a brilliant chef, made master chef at 17 and married by 19, I believe. She made absolutely beautiful food and was utterly incapable of simply following a recipe. I remember her bringing pots of the world's most delicious potato chowder (made largely with the world's supply of heavy cream) when my youngest sister was born. Specatular gingerbread snowflakes, braised roasts, her kitchen was always whirling with bubbling pots and stacked with dirty dishes. The last time I saw her she was making delicate filigree horn cookies with a fluffy maple filling which she packed us off home with and I ate with gleeful abandon. The things she made were always delicious and her freeness with them bespoke her freeness of spirit, of generosity.

That spirit, however, was broken. Then generosity was always for others and not herself. Or perhaps too much for herself, I don't know. Six children, too close together for her health, and a continuing battle with her weight and self image proved a terrible cross. When, as a result of a botched bit of anaesthetics, she was diagnosed with tic douloureux (or trigeminal neuralgia) which left her with constant, electric facial agony for years, things really began to fall apart. There were pills to deal with the pain, pills to overcome the fog of the pills for the pain, pills for nausea, pills for more pain... they carved out the person we knew as Erica one gel-capsule-ful at a time.

Then her husband was less of a support to her than he should have been. He and their kids were her life, and he threatened to cut her out if it. I would like to say that I can't blame him, that her self-destructive cycle was understandably too much, but I just can't. But I wasn't there. He was unfaithful, she took him back. He threw her out of the house, she came crawling back. he threatened divorce, may actually have divorced her, she did his laundry and struggled to simply continue.

Their medical insurance was inconstant. A doctor would take her on, get her into a regimine and then speak to a previous doctor who would label her Erica a junkie and then the whole thing would fall apart, they'd stop dealing with her. And then there was the drink. I can't hold this against her, either-- to do so would make me a hypocrite. The comfort to be found in the bottom of a bottle, the temporary release, cost her so dearly but, in living with such unremitting pain, no, I can't fault her for seeking it.

This past year, Erica wasn't eating anymore. She lived on coffee and kool-aid. Sometimes she'd nibble something to appease her children. My mother begged her to hold on long enough to see her eldest son, a mild autistic boy with wide features, kind eyes, a shy smile and an unbelievable talent for the clarinet, graduate from high school. Her eldest daughter was denied the opportunity to go to University because her mother, her siblings all needed her at home, and now they need her more than ever.

My mother is relatively sure that it wasn't because Erica felt isolated or alone. They spoke on the phone, at least briefly, nearly every day for the past twenty years. My mother thinks it was more Erica's belief that she and her illness, her infirmity and distraction, were holding her family back. They'd be better off without her frail and trailing weight. This breaks my heart, even as I type it.

She'd tried to end her existence before. This time, she made sure it stuck. She got up from bed late last Saturday night, took 50 or 60 sleeping pills, sat down on the couch, drank a six-pack of beer and a pint of whiskey. Her eldest son found her hunched over on the couch in the morning. He tried to revive her before noticing that her face, hands and feet were blue and cold. She'd done it.



The memorial service is Saturday. My mother is supposed to speak but doesn't know what to say. She wants to blast the medical system which left her so unsupported and vulnerable, but this isn't the time. Unfortunately, I don't really know what this is the time for, in the end. The first thing I thought when my sister called to tell me the news was, "Well, shite. I never sent those chicken-flavoured crisps to her. Now I won't." It was something we'd talked about the last time I saw her, two christmas' ago. She'd mentioned being particularly partial to these chicken-flavoured crackers, Chicken in a Basket or something like that. Peculiar flavours of british crisps always being an amusing subject of conversation, I told her about walkers and whatnot and said I would send her a bag. But how the hell do you send a bag of crisps through the post?? So, I never got around to it. And now I never will. This is perhaps the most serious crisp-based guilt I've ever felt.

So, I clearly won't be at the memorial. Here's my offering to the cosmos in lieu of flowers:


Potato Chowder a la Erica
Ingredients:
Potatoes, peeled & diced
1 Onion, chopped
2 Links of kielbasa
1/2 c. Butter
1/2 c. Whole milk
1/2 c. Broth or potato water
2 Tbsp basil, dried
Cornstarch
Salt
Pepper

Boil potatoes and onions in a little water with cut up kielbasa. Cook until potatoes are tendre. Pour in whole milk (or half milk and half broth), butter, cornstarch and water to thicken. Season with salt, pepper and basil. Note: Add more milk for a bigger batch of soup.

Rest in peace, Erica. I hope you've found it. Finally.